


and we'll never see the end

by cirque



Series: All our lives in the wind [2]
Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Claire is eternally supportive, Female Friendship, Friendship/Love, Sherry is a screwed up teenager, maybe it's meant to be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-27
Updated: 2015-03-27
Packaged: 2018-03-19 07:49:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3602103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cirque/pseuds/cirque
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherry has never been introspective but suddenly here it is, needy and abrupt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and we'll never see the end

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this on my new keyboard app. Pesky lil shit kept autocorrecting everything it's a wonder this turned out remotely eggplant.
> 
> (I'm kidding, but for reals it was a pain and I fully expect there to be weird typos I managed to miss.)
> 
> Also, I have a problem and that problem is Sherry Birkin's characterization.

 

> _We could go up, up, up_  
>  _And take that little ride_  
>  _And sit there holding hands_  
>  _And everything would be just right_  
>  _And maybe someday I'll see you again_  
>  _We'll float up in the clouds and we'll never see the end_

 

February 1999, they're teenagers together, which in itself is a mild miracle considering Sherry reaching her next birthday could very easily have not happened. There's a little diner not too far from Simmons's place which does a half decent burger and so they brave the icy walk early on the morning Sherry turns thirteen. The clouds don't part for them, but Claire doesn't expect them to. 

They sit opposite each other at a table for two, and Claire slips a little wrapped package silently over the plastic table like a secret, and Sherry takes it with her eyes big and wide.

"Thank you Claire," she says, before she's even unwrapped it. She doesn't tear through the paper like a rabid dog, instead she unfolds it reverently until she can see the jewellery box beneath. "Oh wow!" Her joy is a little misplaced; it isn't an extravagant piece of jewellery, just a small Saint Jude on a simple chain, but it's all Claire could afford and, really, she figures thirteen year olds don't need twenty-four carat.

"Do you know who it is?"

Sherry's face wrinkles.  "A dude holding a lightsaber?"

"Read the back."

Sherry flips the pendant. "Saint Jude?"

"He's the patron Saint of desperate situations. A little more luck can't hurt, can it?"

Sherry's eyes are like flashlights as she grins in realization. "That's really cool Claire, really. Thank you."

"You're welcome. He'll bring you luck when I'm not around, right?"

It's meant to be cheerful but Sherry looks like a lost little orphan, marooned again and Claire feels like shit, and both of these things she actively tries to avoid so she smiles quickly to cover herself. 

Sherry fidgets and fixes the necklace around her neck to avoid meeting Claire's eyes. The pendant thunks down onto the chest of her little blue Tinkerbell shirt, and it's far too big for her so that she looks like a kid who's got into her mom's jewellery box, but Claire thinks it's apt. She'll grow into it.

 

Sherry is a terrible teenager, but as excuses go hers is pretty damn good so Claire lets it slide, lets it wash over her with her eyes closed, five long years of anger in which she's a shoulder to cry on and an unflinching face to swear at.

Five unending years in which Sherry grows to be older than Claire was that night in Raccoon, older yes but somehow younger, her eyes still red-rimmed, her feet still heavy on the stairs. Claire breathes deep, and remembers how much she loves this not-child.

She's soothed woman's problems and boy troubles, scolded bad grades and smoking, found drugs and condoms, and fought the urge to put a gun in Sherry's hands to give her a purpose, something, anything to do but stagnate and wait for Wesker to show up with a grin and a needle. He does not show up, and Sherry does not go to college, doesn't get a job, doesn't get anything to mark the end of her childhood beyond the certificate of graduation that Simmons has printed on cheap card stock. It's like she's spending her days treading water and Claire is yelling from dry land for her to kick out her legs and swim but it's impossible.

Sherry is nineteen, and still lays her head on Claire's shoulder while they wait by the side of the highway for Simmons to come driving up too fast in his too-flashy car. They're sitting close together on Sherry's upended luggage bag and it is highly uncomfortable. Claire has numb feet, and Sherry is jiggling her legs.

"Claire? If life was perfect, what would you be?"

This is so left field that Claire actually gasps a little, because Sherry has never been introspective but suddenly here it is, needy and abrupt. "I don't know. I honestly never thought of it. You mean if I hadn't joined TerraSave?"

Sherry kicks a stone with her foot. "No I mean if the outbreak never happened. RC never went to hell. You never met me. Ad nauseum."

Claire has grown a sixth sense over the years and it activates now, a little itch behind her hippocampus. She rubs the girl's arm a couple times. "Sherry. You _have not_ held me back."

"But you could have had a normal life."

"I'm not doing this for you. Well, not only you, I mean. I'm doing it for everyone in Raccoon who didn't get a chance."

Sherry is quiet, thinking of her third grade teacher and her best friend, and her neighbor's newborn daughter, and the rabbit her dad had bought her when she turned twelve, and and and -. She tries desperately not to think about what they looked like dead and reanimated.

She shakes her head. "Just answer the question."

Claire shrugs. "Argentina. Bolivia. I always wanted to see the rainforest. I was saving up. I had a travel guide and everything. I wanted to trek, you know, not just a vacation, I wanted to see new things. Bugs and stuff. Jaguars. It was kids stuff though, I probably would've got dengue fever or something, racked up a hella high insurance bill and took some crappy job to pay it off."

"But what did you want to be, when you were a kid?"

"Other than an adventurer? Lawyer."

Sherry accepts this with a mild laugh.

"Alright smartass, your turn."

Sherry kicks another stone and it rockets out into the path of a passing car, clicking off the hubcap. "I wanted to be a doctor. Like my mom and dad, you know, but I guess I didn't know exactly what kind of doctors they were."

It is sadder, somehow, than Claire's unrealized dream of adventuring - a little girl who didn't get to have her own ambition, eternally stuck in the stage of copying her parents, twelve and watching the world burn. Claire shivers, though she isn't cold.

"I'm glad it happened. Raccoon, I mean."

"Fuck Sherry, you can't say that."

"But it's true. I wouldn't have you otherwise."

"Sherry, listen - "

"I don't need a lecture. I know it's screwed up. Maybe I'll get over it, probably not, but I'm glad I met you."

"Sherry." It's meant to be a warning but it comes out a little desperate.

"It's mightily screwed up but meeting you was the best thing that happened to me, and I know you'd rather it never happened, I know it's all wrong, I know it sucks that things are the way they are, with Leon and your brother and his friend always in danger, but you love me, right?"

"Sherry, I love you very much, more than anything, but if I could trade it for you having a normal childhood, I would."

"My life would never have been normal with those people."

"You're nineteen. Things will change when you're older."

"I'm a prisoner is what I am."

"That will change too."

"Mr Wesker can't live forever, right?"

 

Albert Wesker cannot live forever, Claire is certain, and eventually her brother shoots his face up with missiles in a volcano somewhere in Africa and Sherry is, miraculously, free. Twenty-three and more than ready, half a life away from Raccoon, she finally gets a gun and a badge in her own name. They're shipping her out West for a short course of training, and the timing works out quite well because Claire has plans to visit Jill and so they fly most of the way together, side by side in economy class, Sherry leaning on Claire's shoulder and complaining that the altitude hurts her ears.

"I'm so proud of you," Claire says, over and over as she hugs her tighter than is probably polite for a pair of grown women. They're at the airport in Denver saying goodbye, and it's busy enough that people are giving them the side-eye as they pass.

"Not disappointed I didn't join your band of eco-warriors?"

"I'll get over it."

"Try not to miss me too much?" Sherry looks marooned again, preparing for her longest time away from home, her hair shorter than it's ever been.

"Miss you? It's ice cream and takeout dusk til dawn at Jill's place, I won't even notice you're gone."

Sherry chuckles but neither of them believes it, they both know they'll cry oceans and be talking on the phone before too long. It's the way it's always been, when Simmons kept them apart, and Claire has no wish to change things just because Sherry is old enough not to need her comfort.

"I'll miss you," Sherry says in a small voice, and her eyes are shining, and it won't be long before she's full on sobbing, and causing more of a scene. She looks a little desperate, unsure of her ability to exist in the real world. 

"Don't start that," says Claire. "Your flight leaves in forty minutes, now go on. Go save the world." She kisses her cheeks a few times, and the side of her head, then reminds herself that Sherry is an adult now, and pulls back with a small smile.

"This'll bring me luck right?" Sherry has her thumb hooked through the chain of her old Saint Jude necklace, the one Claire had bought her when they were just starting out. It's a little worse for wear, but in much better state than that old leather jacket she still has somewhere.

"It has done so far."

"Okay," Sherry says, and takes a step backwards. "Here I go. Agent Birkin. Saving the world."

Claire salutes, then feels ridiculous in the highly public airport, so segues into brushing aside her bangs. Sherry waves back, her little pendant catching the light, and it's all Claire could have wanted for her really, off to do her own thing in this crazy sphere of weirdness they never seem to escape.

**Author's Note:**

> Also, this is a series now? The two works aren't exactly sequels/prequels, but they are in the same vein so there we go. It's a series now, and there will most likely definitely be more because hello~


End file.
